In the fall of 1864, Brigadier General James H. Carleton sent Kit Carson and about four hundred men on a punitive campaign against the Kiowa and Comanche Indians of the high plains. The resulting battle was one of the largest in the history of North American Indian Wars. Yet this conflict has been relegated to historical obscurity.
In this paper, I examine why Kit Carson’s 1864 Adobe Walls Campaign is forgotten, I measure the success of the mission, and place it in the larger context of nineteenth century Indian Wars, particularly those prosecuted against plains tribes.